40 decapitated babies in Israel: how the news arose and how true it

Talking about the horrors of the attacks of the militants on Israel, some bring an argument: four dozen very young children were not just killed, the attack participants cut off their heads. Opponents object: these statements are propaganda and denigration of “fighters for the liberation of Palestine”, there were noheaded babies. “Verified” tells how this story appeared and entrenched in a public field and what is currently known about the children who died at the hands of militants.

The message about the babies killed by the militants, some of whom were decapitated, began to spread on October 10, three days after the Hamas attack on Israel. They wrote about what happened (with reservations about data failure) The Insider, "Radio Liberty","Present" TASS and other large media. The plot collected millions of views in Telegram - in particular, the posts about the massacre and the alleged death of 40 babies placed channels Readovka (969,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Caution, news!"(591 000)," Nevzorov "(542 000 And 511 000), Varlamov News (506,000), "Ukraine now: news, war, Russia"(457 000),"Insider UA | Novelty | Ukrainian"(427 000) and Nexta Live (367 000). 

In the evening of the same day, refutations began to appear, which also received great attention of the audience, for example, in the channels Readovka (1.3 million views), "Fisherman"(410 000) and"Russia now"(306 000). TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov wrote an angry rebuke, convicting the media in a lie (304,000 views), and shared on October 11 post, of which Israel is accused of production, allegedly no decapitated children. IN "Komsomolskaya Pravda"The material was released under the heading" Israeli Bucha ": a monstrous lie about 40 decapitated babies became a weapon in the war", and "Russian newspaper"Called the plot a fake. 

Messages of anti -Israeli nature, in which the killings of children are declared a fake, continued to appear later. October 23 Telegram channel "Fisherman”(321,000 views) said that“ there are no babies among the killed Israelis at all, ”and“ in principle, 16 children aged 4 to 17 died in total. ” October 25 The same information was voiced in the video of the YouTube channel “Mom in a hat” (90,000 views), information about the children who died in Kfar-aza called a stuffing and later-for example, a TV presenter Ruslan Ostashko (97,000) at the end of November. 

How did the plot of 40 decapitated babies appear? 

The authors of most publications refer to the i24news television channel, in which journalist Nicole Zedek conducts a report from Kibutz Kfar-Aza, attacked by the militants of Hamas. On the social network X (formerly Twitter) video It was laid out on October 10 at 13:56 Moscow time, it was watched more than 12 million times. However, the journalist in the plot does not call the total number of those killed, nor separately the number of dead children or babies. The zedek literally pronounces the following: “I spoke with several soldiers, and they told what they witnessed when they went through different houses in different communities. Deadless children (as they said). Shot. Shot families, literally in their beds. " 

In similar expressions, Nick Robertson's reporter described the incident. video For the Instagram account of the American television channel: “The bodies are everywhere. A huge number of killed members of this kibbutz. Men, women, children, with their hands, shot, shot, tortured, with cut off their heads. " At the same time, the journalist noted that the number of victims is still unknown and there is a calculation of them. 

The number of 40 babies is mentioned in friend The video from the icons laid out by the official i24news account at X at 15:19: “About 40 babies were carried out on a stretcher ... The cribs were turned upside down, the strollers were thrown, the doors are widely opened.” At 15:32, the cloth was retreated by the zedek, supplementing him with a clarification: “The soldiers told me that, in their opinion, 40 babies / children were killed. The exact number of the dead is still unknown, since the military continues to go around the house behind the house and find new victims among the Israelis. ” Note that these messages do not say that all 40 children were beheaded.

Later, Zedek gave interview Deputy commander of the detachment of 71 Army of Israeli Defense (IDF), who found the body of those who died in Kfar Aza. In a conversation with journalistic, David Ben Zion spoke about the discovery of decapitated bodies in this kibbutz, including children. In the evening of the same day, this information confirmed Business Insider Representative Major Nir Dinar. Both military did not report the number of dead. About the decapitated bodies declared Press Secretary of the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu Tal Heinrich, Mentioned On the decapitation in his speeches, US President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Anthony Biginen and coordinator of the National Security Council for Strategic Communications John Kirby. How many Israelis were killed in this way, they did not specify.

On the same day, October 10, the unnamed representative of the IDF in the telephone conversation He answered the request of the Turkish news agency Anadolu to comment on the reports that the Hamas militants were decapitating children in border kibbutses. The interlocutor of journalists said: "We saw this news, but we have no details or evidence of this." The words of the representative of the Israeli army, who only said that so far he could not quickly confirm or refute the information, caused a flurry of accusations against the I24news television channel and specifically clip, which were then common In all the media who wrote about the massacre on October 7–9 and referred to the report of an Israeli journalist. 

And although Zedek did not talk about 40 decapitated babies, nor about 40 killed, ""many of which they are beheaded, ”the attachment of its two outputs on the air occurred, and it was in this form that the information entered the posts on social networks and in the headlines Some Media. In particular, that “40 children were beheaded and burned in front of their parents,” wrote an American actor of Jewish origin, the star of “Very strange deeds” Noa Shnapp - his fast On Instagram, published on October 11, received more than a million likes. By calculations Mark Owen Jones, assistant professor at the Department of the Middle East at the University of Hamad Ben Khalifa in Qatar, in X the plot received more than 44 million reactions (likes, reposts and comments) in the first four days of distribution.

In the publications of large Israeli and world mediaTimes of Israel, CNN, NBC and others, including those indicated at the very beginning of this analysis), the wording of 40 decapitated babies did not appear - almost everyone referred to the reports of the zedek and the statements of the military, without mixing them into a single statement, and regularly issued updates on the topic. However, loud headlines, for example: “40 babies were killed by Hamas. Children are beheaded ... " hit on the covers of a number of British tabloids, and some publications are clearly They abused Clickbeite, releasing materials under the headings like "up to 40 children were found killed after the Hamas massacre in the Israeli kibbutz." 

What data is available and how many children were beheaded by militants?

Already on October 11, the speaker IDF Major Libby Weiss reported CBS News, that several Israeli soldiers who were the first to get to Kfar-Aza reported on the discovery of “headless children of different ages, from babies to children a little older”, as well as adults whose bodies were dissected. The next day of the Ministry of Defense of Israel Confirmed The detection of decapitated bodies in Beeri kibbutz-it is 36 km from Kfar-Aza and also attacked the militants. At that time, the corpses of more than 100 killed, how many of them were beheaded, were not specified in Beeri. Press Secretary IDF Jonathan Conricus only noted that they were babies. According to Conricus, the coroner from Zaka (the Israeli public organization uniting voluntary rescue groups), which worked at the place of massacre in the Kibuza Beeri, examined the bodies of children and confirmed the facts of decapitation. “I admit that it took us some time to truly understand and verify this report, and it was difficult to believe that even Hamas could make such a barbaric act,” the representative of the Israeli army said. October 15 Detection of at least one children's corpse without a head testified Colonel IDF GOLAN WAH, then Confirming This is in an interview with France 24.

The most reliable data were presented publicly on October 16. Dr. Chen Kugel, head of the National Center for Forensic Medicine Israel (Abu Kabir) in Tel Aviv, in response to the question of the journalist The Media Line Aaron Poris saidthat the age of victims varies from three months to 80 or 90 years. He reported a large number of charred bodies; Some of the dead, he said, burned alive. Some bodies, including children, are deprived of their heads. To clarify whether they were decapitated, Kugel answered in the affirmative, making a reservation that, given the circumstances, it is difficult to establish whether the heads were separated from the bodies to or after death, and how exactly this happened - "whether they were cut off with a knife or this [result of the explosion of the shell] RPG." As before It wrote “Tested” in the analysis of publications on the decapitated Palestinian child, there are a number of reasons why the head can be separated from the body - from cutting and gap of the projectile to the fall of the building structures or burning.

Kugel announced the results of a group of 200 pathologists, which included experts from the USA, Switzerland, New Zealand and other countries. Experts, in particular, confirm that many those killed before death were tortured and emphasized: some bodies are quite difficult to identify, since only fragments remained from them. 

The exact number of children who died during the Hamas attack, and their age is currently unknown - the Israeli official services have not yet published a list of a list, limiting the general number of victims (first it was said about 1400 dead, then the figure was specified - about 1200). Your calculations leads The Haaretz newspaper, which confirmed at the time of the publication of this analysis of the personality of 1220 dead. The publication compiled (and updates) this list, based on open sources, personal contacts and messages from relatives of the dead, as well as on their posts on social networks, checking the information with the data of nine Israeli departments at once, who identified the dead.

Thus, the information about the decapitated bodies (including children's) discovered after the Hamas attack on Israel is confirmed by both the reports of eyewitnesses and representatives of the IDF and the data of the international group of pathologists. However, at the moment, it is not known for how many people of different ages were killed in this way - Israeli authorities, independent researchers and international organizations do not publish statistics. Moreover, the separation of the head from the body could occur, including as a result of indirect physical impact - in each case it is required to conduct an investigation. A number of bodies and their fragments are still not identified.

Photo on the cover: Stop frame from reporting i24news